My desktop is Displaying my icons with vectors.. Help!

Is it your desktop or dock that is displaying the icons like that?

 

I looks like it's just in the dock, correct? Are you running some sort of dock skinning program? If so, perhaps it's no longer compatible and needs to be updated.

 

Looks like the video card isn't powerful enough. Or are you not running full color resolution, only thousands of color?

 

Check the color depth. It kinda looks like anti-aliasing

 

Are you running any kind of transparent dock or cleardock applications?

Also is there any way to post an example of what's happening in Quicktime?

Also, just to be overly basic... does this problem survive a reboot?

 

looks like a corrupt image cache of some sort.

it's certainly not his graphics card being "not powerful enough." that's a silly comment. OS X reverts to software rendering if a graphics card can't process the image effects it is asked to do. Even a first generation iMac has sufficient graphical "power" to render the dock.

It could be something wrong with the graphics driver, though. maybe a quickdraw problem?

Try switching accounts and see if you can replicate the problem. If you only have one account, make another one for testing.

If it doesn't happen on another account, that rules out any sort of hardware problem. next step is the usual repair permissions, zap pram, reset preferences, etc.

If the effect only happens on one login, then it's probably a preference file that's borking things up.

I suspect that you'll be able to replicate the problem in a different account, though. Has the x950 been modified in any way?

and by the way, i wouldn't call these "vectors." vectors are shapes created through the use of lines, curves and coordinates. This also has nothing to do with aliasing or the lack thereof.

It appears to be a problem rendering the alpha channels in the icons themselves. If you can post a photo of the effect as it happens in quicktime, that would be helpful, as well. Be as detailed as possible in your descriptions of what happens when.

 

From that last screen shot it looks like you have a theme installed. That could be what is messing up your dock.

 

It's not, I have used that theme which requires Shapeshifter and it never done that to the dock.

 

Won't know for certain until you disable the theme though. Perhaps there's been some variable introduced that is beneath the surface affecting the theme.

 

Quicktime and the dock both use the graphics card for rendering, whereas youtube and VLC don't.

To me it looks like corruption on the graphics card (possibly bad memory or overheating). I suggest switching another one in if you can and see if the problem persists.

If it goes away with a different graphics card, then there is your problem.

Edit: Just so you know where I'm coming from with this, my old Radeon 9800 Pro had an overheating problem in 3D games. Graphics got messed up like that after awhile and slowly got worse. Anything that wasn't accelerated by the graphics card was fine however (like youtube videos and vlc).

 

classic overheating issues.

get smcfancontrol and crank up the fans a while and see what happens.